


Tonight Belongs to Us (aka Two Bottles of Scotch)

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, Canon Compliant, Drinking, F/M, Science Babies get wasted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:43:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6983551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his first exam at the Academy, Fitz sat alone in his room, studying until it was late enough -- early enough? -- to call his mum in Scotland. </p><p>After his last exam at the Academy, Fitz got plastered, really well and truly plastered, with Jemma Simmons, double PhD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tonight Belongs to Us (aka Two Bottles of Scotch)

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a drabble. lol

After his first exam at the Academy, Fitz sat alone in his room, studying until it was late enough -- early enough? -- to call his mum in Scotland. 

After his last exam at the Academy, Fitz got plastered, really well and truly plastered, with Jemma Simmons, double PhD. She’d been done for several hours by the time he burst into her room, but they did everything together by this point and she’d waited so they could celebrate together. 

By this time, their last year at the Academy, Jemma had a single by default. Not because she was unliked, but because everyone knew she talked through problems in her sleep and stayed up late working on assignments with that odd engineer who practically lived with her but who, to everyone’s best knowledge, she wasn’t dating. Besides, the valedictorian had earned a few perks. 

So when Fitz threw open her door, brandishing two bottles of Scotch he’d spent much too much money on, no one was there to judge the ink smears up his right forearm or his mismatched socks. There was only Jemma, and these things only made her love him more. 

“We did it,” he enthused. “Simmons, we bloody did it!” 

“I know, Fitz,” she chuckled, watching him spin about the room, hugging the bottles to his chest as if dancing with them. “My grades are already posted.” 

“No!” he gasped, lunging for her computer. “Can I check mine?” 

“You won’t have gotten the top spot.” She scooted out of the way, accepting the bottles from him as he ravaged her keyboard.

“Well, obviously, but I’m still curious.” 

“And what are these for?” 

He glanced sideways at her, eyebrows raised at her density. “For making up on years of lost time.” 

“Some of us have actually already been drinking for years, Fitz. And I planned to spend tonight catching up on several years of sleep.” 

“Here we go,” he whispered, clicking into their student portal. “I was the first one done that last exam so I don’t know if they’ll be up yet but-- Aha!” He threw both arms into the air, grinning down at Jemma. “Perfect once again. If we were here one more semester, I just might’ve caught you, Simmons.” 

“Not a chance.” She spun her desk chair away from him, mostly in order to hide her satisfied grin. They’d really done it. 

“Tomorrow, we can worry about the future. Or maybe the day after. Tonight --” He grabbed the back of her chair, turning her back around so their knees knocked. He leaned down to tug on the ends of her hair. “Tonight belongs to us.” And he took the bottles back from her. 

“If we’re done having a custody battle over the Scotch, will you pour?” 

“In a custody battle, dear Simmons,” Fitz intoned, heading directly for the cabinet where Jemma kept her glasses, “I would naturally prevail, being the closest thing to a biological parent this fine elixir can claim. You’re but a friendly neighbor.” He paused in opening the first bottle. “Do you have any mixers?” 

Jemma stood and bumped him aside with her hip to look next to her fridge. “Tequila?” 

“Scotch on the rocks it is, then.” 

They started off with Jemma back in her desk chair and Fitz on her bed, a true indication of how seamless their personal spaces were. He stretched out his besocked feet to roll her across the floor, towards him, away from him, back towards him. 

“To excellence,” Fitz toasted pompously. Jemma laughed but clinked her glass with his, taking a long sip. 

“Oh dear,” she choked, wincing as the alcohol burned down her throat. 

“Simmons! This is good Scotch!” 

“It is! But it’s still strong.” 

“To strong alcohol,” Fitz suggested, hitting her glass and taking another swallow. 

“Do you intend to make it to commencement on Sunday?” she teased, but followed his lead. 

“They can’t start without us, really,” he mused, leaning back against her mountain of pillows. “Have you planned your speech yet?” 

“Ugh, no,” she sighed, swirling her drink. “Want to help?” 

“Being the exemplar of public speaking myself...” He let his head loll onto his shoulder, looking at her, framed as she was with the last light of the day through her window. “That’s the true reason I never tried to recover your lead, you know. If I were top of the class, I’d have to give a speech. Blech.” He wrinkled his nose, and she grinned from where she had her teeth clamped around the rim of her glass. 

“Someday they’ll have us back here giving speeches to the cadets,” Jemma mused. “Can you imagine?” 

“Cheeky little blighters, I bet they’ll be.” 

“You’re such a grump.” Jemma twisted to lift a stack of sticky notes off her desk and flung them in his general direction. He batted them away triumphantly. 

“Genius affords one some liberties in life, Simmons, being a truculent arse among them. It adds to my mystique.” 

She burst into laughter, nearly spewing the drink she’d just taken. “What mystique? You’re about as opaque as polystyrene.” 

“I should hope not,” Fitz muttered, peering into his drink with a light blush working its way above his wrinkled collar. “I’ll have you know there are things even  _ you  _ don’t know about me, Simmons. Things you wouldn’t want to know.” 

“I doubt that,” she replied firmly. “You can tell me anything.” 

“What if I told you I cheated on the Principles of Genetic Engineering exam?” 

“The one where you beat my score?” Jemma cried, lunging towards him across the room. “Fitz, you didn’t--” 

“Oi, watch the glass!” he laughed, rolling sideways to stop her onslaught. “I was joking, that exam was a breeze.” 

She slumped next to him on the bed. “That wasn’t funny.” 

“Would you have reported me?” he asked very seriously, sitting cross-legged so he could face her. 

Jemma considered him, taking another drink to draw out the suspense. “If I weren’t already top of the class, perhaps.” 

“Savage Simmons, they should call you,” he said, shaking his head severely. “Willing to take down her friends to advance herself--” 

“Genius affords one some liberties in life, Fitz,” she mocked him. 

“Damn your memory,” he sighed. 

“I’m sure you’ll be glad for it someday. It’ll save your skin somehow, I’m sure.” 

“Really? You think  _ you’re  _ the one who’ll be doing the saving? Three to one odds I save your life at least twice as often as you save mine.” 

All the color drained from Jemma’s face. “Oh, Fitz, that’s really not something I want to be thinking about at all, let alone betting on.” 

“Sorry, course not,” he said quickly. “Let’s talk about something else.” 

They watched a football match, Jemma taking a shot anytime she shouted, “Red card!” at the screen and Fitz drinking each time an offsides was call. After that it was time for a rewatch of the Tenth Doctor’s seasons -- at Jemma’s insistence, as class valedictorian. They only made it through three episodes, though, before Jemma was struck by inspiration for her commencement speech and clambered on top of her desk, brandishing her glass -- refilled several times by now -- to Fitz and the rest of her imaginary audience. 

“Friends, countrymen--” 

“Most of them aren’t your countrymen,” Fitz reminded her. “Many of them aren’t even men.” 

“Friends, daleks, Romans and Ewoks, we have traveled through time and space to gather in this one moment in the continuum--” 

“Have you ever thought about that, though?” Fitz interrupted, rising to stand below her, grabbing her hand as it waved above him and tugging her down so they were almost face-to-face. “How many people there are in the world, how many millennia people have lived on this earth, how many other earths there might be -- “ 

“And yet somehow we ended up in this same place, in this same moment,” Jemma finished for him. “Miraculous, really.” 

“Yeah, if you believe in that sort of thing,” Fitz shrugged. 

Jemma clambered down to sit on the edge of the desk and he pressed against her knees, leaning forward to check the level of her drink. 

“I think it’s time for a tequila pick-me up,” Jemma suggested. 

They each threw a shot back, then ten minutes later did another one, as they’d forgotten whether they’d done the first one. They played a rather heated, ten-round game of Rochambo for the honor of choosing the next activity, and Fitz won -- somehow, possibly for the first time in their friendship, making it quite likely that Jemma was either quite drunk or let him win -- so they spent the next two hours watching a horror film.

Contrary to expectations, as fearless as Jemma was in real-life science and adventure, she watched the entire movie from her burrow in Fitz’s shoulder with a hand over her eyes. When she ran down to get the pizza they ordered, he waited behind the door and jumped out at her, causing her to fling the pizza in the air and whack him across the face. 

The pizza flew out of its box but landed toppings-up on her bed, so it was salvageable. Fitz’s face on the other hand--

“I’m so sorry,” Jemma repeated as she held an icepack to his face, running her other hand gently along his hairline, pushing his curls away from the salve she’d applied, but she was laughing so hard he couldn’t take her apology seriously. “It’s your own fault though, you know that--” 

“My mum’s going to see me in all my graduation pictures with a giant red Simmons handprint on my face--” 

“A fitting metaphor for our respective academic achievement at the Academy,” Jemma suggested, then collapsed into giggles as he slapped her hand away and held the icepack himself. 

“You know what would help with that?” Jemma said suddenly, sitting back up. “Tequila.”

“Or Scotch!” 

“Or both!” 

It was a terrible idea and tasted dreadful, but soon thereafter Fitz’s injury was forgotten, Jemma was forgiven, and the pizza was eaten in under ten minutes. By this point it was well past five in the morning, and they both climbed under Jemma’s top blanket, Fitz still cradling the remaining half bottle of Scotch, in case it were necessary. 

Jemma tried to talk to Fitz about the future, but her words kept slurring together and he kept having brainwaves about new technology, and he’d grab a felt-tip pen from her bedside table and sketch a design on her arm or write an equation across the exposed skin of her upper chest. (That last one tickled.) Jemma looked down her arm at Fitz, who was holding her wrist and intently -- but quite gently, really -- tattooing her with his latest idea. This was her future, she felt quite certain, this boy here, brimming over with so many brilliant ideas that they spilled onto her and she carried them as best she could, reflecting them back to him, knowing that he’d do the same for her, better together. He glanced up at her, turning her arm over to get her approval, and she swallowed a lump in her throat. 

"You know you're brilliant, right, Fitz?" she whispered urgently. She forgot to tell him that sometimes, so busy was she with reminding herself how great _she_ was. 

"Whatever, Jemma," he brushed it off, but he went back to his work with a little smile and a rosy blush. 

It was the first time he'd called her that, her first name, and though neither of them remembered it after their hangovers, something of the feeling of it lingered.

They woke the next morning -- the next afternoon, actually -- tangled up in each other, Jemma’s hair in Fitz’s mouth, both groaning at the sunlight that assaulted them as they’d never thought to draw the shades. Fitz thought about getting up, going back to his own room, maybe for a shower or to brush his teeth, but then he looked at Jemma, and she giggled and snuggled up against him and pulled the blanket over their heads like a fort and god he was never leaving. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth there as well!


End file.
